


1976

by mangohaz



Series: The 70's [3]
Category: Rush (2013)
Genre: Christmas, M/M, reunited, sorry i know its September
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:42:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7938487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangohaz/pseuds/mangohaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niki gets a call in the morning</p>
            </blockquote>





	1976

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry but i wont let this ship die !!!!!! DNR my ass !!!!!!!!!!

The phone rang at 7am on boxing day. Marlene answered in German down the stairs from Niki who still laid in bed and he could hear her speaking down the phone in a quiet but harsh voice as if she was scolding whoever was on the other line. As quickly as the conversation started, it stopped and he could hear her storming away from the phone and into the kitchen. 

He daren’t go down and ask her so soon after she hung up so there he lay for a few more minutes, thinking over the possibilities of who could piss off his dear wife so early in the morning especially when her parents were still in bed just two doors along from where she stood.

He waited 20 more minutes until he begun to smell the coffee that was strong enough to make someone feel like they were on meth and was coincidentally the only coffee that Marlene would drink. The phone would typed out a receipt of every number that called had slowly plugged out the 11 digits of a London mobile number. Niki had laughed when James had bought a mobile phone, it being almost the size of Niki’s house as he had said as James had paraded it around the paddocks. 

James. 

James would be the only person that could put Marlene in such a rough mood so early in the morning, only person with a London code that could put Marlene in such a rough mood. Niki ripped the paper off the tiny printer in the phone before sneaking his way up the stairs so Marlene nor her parents were able to hear he was awake yet. 

Her parents were... Skeptical of him now he was scarred. He was tainted goods now and they didn’t trust their daughter with him anymore so him, sneaking away from his wife in the morning with the number of his rival hidden in the palm of his hand was definitely not giving him any good husband points.

Careful enough to close the door but failing to lock it behind him he slunk over to the phone and began to slide the numbers into place so that the phone began to ring in the silly dial tone of the British. It ran three times before James picked up, he heard breathing before he heard a voice as if James had run for the phone from the other side of his house just in case it had been someone important. 

It was slurred before it came out of his mouth “Nik-Nak!” And Niki sighed. Of course, James was drunk and Niki was neither shocked nor surprised just upset. Upset that he’d trusted that maybe he could have a proper and sensible conversation with the man who had seemingly been spiraling further and further since that evening in the garage last year, it only getting worse when Niki had crashed. The feeling of inadequacy falling on him harder when Niki returned, fully accepting of James’ will in the accident happening. 

Niki breathed in deeply, rubbing his temple before beginning, “James, are you drunk?” which, although he should have suspected it, when James replied by laughing, Niki became even more aggravated by him.

“Of course I am, dear. When am I not?” It was an answer that again, Niki would and should suspect. 

Niki continued to rub his temples, only this time he had reached across into the draw on his side of the bed to grab his moisturiser to calm his skin as he stressed it at the same time, Marlene would keep the phone on her side of the bed as she knew friends wouldn’t call back if they caught Niki straight out of bed.

“And dear, dear James. Why are you drunk at...” He squinted at the clock next to the phone as his eyes blurred slightly, “8am on Boxing Day morning?” James laughed again at the simplistic answer that would follow, well at least the first bit Niki would suspect.

His cackle continued to taunt Niki into his sentence as James took a malicious turn for the worst, “Because I’m always drunk aren’t I, Niki? Isn’t that why you don’t love me? Or is it the fact of my penis? Or even because you are too stuck up your own ass to even realise that you are in love with me, Niki. You love me. You love me and you love my penis, you love it when I have my mouth all over your ass and your balls. You love it when I do you so dirty you can’t walk right in the next day. You love it when I stretch you wide open with my dic-” Niki was breathing deeply, hand applying a sly pressure to his slowly growing crotch, his breathing stopped completely when a voice came down the other line.

A deep, accented and rough German voice came down the line, “Uh, Niki, it's Ernst here. Marlene says breakfast is ready.” before the line droned for a second and complete silence reigned true between the two men.

How much had he heard and how screwed was Niki now? 

It took 20 seconds and Marlene was marching up the stairs, James was still on the other end and Niki still had a tent in his pyjama trousers but the electricity, the spark had left the air and so Niki stayed, frozen still. Hand covering his erection and the air blowing out of his mouth that made him sound like an old train, chugging away into the darkness.

She burst through the door, giggling a little bit as if she suspected to find her husband asleep and would be able to jump on him to wake him with kisses, like the romance she had always wanted in the marriage that Niki was somehow unable to deliver. The laughing stopped, and another person was added into the terrified silence that engulfed them all now.

“Niki.” Her voice was attempting to sound strong but wavered, the last ‘i’ curling slightly and the threat of tears wobbled at the corner of her eye, “What’s going on?” The receiver begun to whine, indicating that James had decided to step away from this one and leave Niki floundering in open water while his wife staring even more holes into the side of his face.

“Uh. It was, uh.” Words failed him, he wasn’t able to form a sentence to redeem himself and Marlene's face only got angrier as he stuttered his way through a blurred excuse for his morning boner and it obviously having been James on the other line. 

Marlene seemed to think over the factors for a second, looked her husband up and down before becoming terrifyingly calm and collected toward him, “Get dressed and get out. Don’t come back Niki, get out.” He didn’t know if this was anger of if this was her saving him and letting him away from the situation she could see he didn’t want to be in. She left the room calmly and moved swiftly down the stairs. He could see her like a vision as she’d moved away without closing the door. Her legs didn’t seem to move up and down as she glided down the stairs like an enigma in the daylight. The sun had begun to reveal itself, peaking over the tops of the tall trees that surrounded their home. Niki remembered the light looking different in their flat in London, it seemed darker even in the morning when the sun would shine right through the livingroom and kitchen window to blind them both, it was good though. The sun would shine so bright in the mornings that they could finally see clearly, they would sit on the old sofa together, hand in hand while they held their teas and on the majority of occasions, regretted their decisions from the night before.

Things were different now. Niki was scarred and people were too scared to talk to him anymore. Only people who knew who he was would attempt to come up to him but even then there was a stammer in their words or a shake in their hands that would cause Niki to pull back into himself.

Monster, that's what they thought of him. 

Niki quickly shook himself out of the drowning thoughts and begun to dress himself. He was very sure where he was going and made sure to grab every one of his credit cards and slotted them into his wallet before hopping down the stairs and into the Jeep, Niki stared longingly at the Ferraris that hid behind the door of his garage, the Jeep meant nothing to him but he there was no point in even trying to push his 1965 Ferrari 250 LM through the great amounts of snow that had built over the month of December.

It took him an hour and a half to get to the airport and another 2 hours to get from Vienna to Gatwick where he hailed a cab into the centre of London. The cabbie watched for a few seconds as Niki stood on the doorstep. The snow lay thick on the high step and all around him. As he finally pulled the knocker and let it drop back against the painted pink wood. Never one hide was James, even on his little suburban street in central London, filled with middle class families.

Instinctively, Niki wrapped his coat tighter around himself, pulling his bag over his shoulder again, the strap, even over 3 layers, was pulling at his burnt skin but his dainty fingers were too cold to pull the heavy gym bag to the other side of his body. There was noise behind the door and then there he was. 

A heaved laugh dropped from his lips before, “A vision in white you are.” Niki looked him up and down before flicking his eyes to look into James’.

“Merry Christmas. Let me in.” James moved to the side as fast as his stumbling feet would let him so the tiny man could barge past him, dropping the icy bag at the floor by the stairs and walking with purpose into the kitchen where he began to fill the kettle with water before moving onto the stove. James had finally managed to wobble his way into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway so he could lean on it and observe Niki as he tried to busy himself from the phenomena that was apparently taking place in James’ kitchen.

“What are you doing here Niki? Shouldn’t you be at home with your wife?” Niki spun to face him suddenly, the kettles whine had begun, warning them both.

“I thought I loved you, James? That's why I’m here.” James watched him for the next few minutes as he turned to collect the complaining kettle from the stove and pour two cups of English Breakfast into the cleanest mugs he could find before walking through the open plan to the living room. James eventually followed him, picking up the mug from the large coffee table while tapping a few liquor bottles under the sofa with his foot so Niki couldn’t see them, couldn’t see how depressed James was with him so far away with a beautiful wife who actually loved him, must be nice.

As Niki looked anywhere but at James he noticed how the room looked exactly like their old livingroom used to. It was a fault for the room as the space directly opposite the windows was in front of the sliding doors that covered the majority of the wall into the kitchen meaning that that you had to go up onto your tiptoes to squeeze around the side of the oversized sofa so you could sit. But it was like it used to be. The TV sat in the window like it used to, only now it was much larger and had colour whereas their TV that had sat in the window of the flat in outer London had been the same size as James’ head, had only been in black and white and only got 1 channel. Even the same type of flowers sat on the windowsill, where they used to sit back in the grimey flat in a vague attempt by Niki to make their little home a little more hospitable to any guests they may get and while James would have brutally bullied him for it had he ever admitted it, the white with a pink trim chrysanthemums were his favourite flower and there they sat, in the window where a christmas tree should be standing proudly, Niki’s favourite flowers.

Fingers curled around James’ hand and a head rested on the broad shoulder, like they used to. The sun had gone down now though and the moon had risen behind the dark clouds that poured snow onto the ground. The moon watched as Niki told James he loved him, like he used to.


End file.
